Working in the semiconductor business - SOC design, having access to certain reverse engineering data. Turns out that $STM has a major advantage with their PCM technology on 18nm FD-SOI that let's competitors in the SOC/uC business s* their pants as nobody in the industry can't compete with the area advantage ST achieves with their PCM technology.
- 3V programming makes charge pump implementations from coincell operation unnecessary.
- Radiation Hardned opens the door to a broad range of applications aside from automotive.
- I've seen design comparisons with 4M NVM that consume 40% less area which is a pretty big + on the margin.
Overall I think ST has a future cash cow technology providing a major advantage over competition like NXP, Infineon, TI.
Glad to read about your opinions.